"I'm proud of you, doll. That was proper villain work you did tonight." Dominatrix looks over with a brief smile, then turns her eyes back to the road.

"Thanks, babe." Minion smiles back at her weakly. He finishes knotting the makeshift bandages around his bleeding arm, then leans out the passenger window and vomits again, painting the side of the minivan in long puce stripes. As he hangs there catching his breath and letting the lingering strings of vomit-studded drool blow away in the freeway wind, he thinks that he really should do something about all that rust.

Wiping his mouth on his dusty sleeve, he sits back in his seat and reaches for the water bottle in the cupholder. "So did you know about Very Verbose all along?"

Dominatrix chuckles at the nickname. "One of the regulars at the dungeon works for the hero licensing office. As soon as Val showed up in the papers, I asked her very nicely and she told me all about it. His return is quite the scandal. He was always popular with civilians, so they were hesitant to just arrest him. We'll see if that changes when they learn the extent of his mess."

She adjusts the rearview mirror. The whole time they've been backtracking to shake pursuit, the streets have been quiet. It's after midnight, and the only people around are happy people stumbling home from bars, and miserable people stumbling home from bars. The wailing sirens slowly fade as they leave downtown behind for the quiet of the suburbs.

"Of course, I knew him as soon as I saw him. I've never met anyone else with so little sexual energy. I'm more curious about this Henchr business."

So Minion finally tells her everything, from the humiliating fights against White Squall and Eddie, to the perplexing meeting with the mousy computer science teacher, to discovering the hero lair and planting the tracker in the car. To his relief, she doesn't laugh too hard at him, only as much as he deserves. And now that it's over, he finds he can even laugh along.

"I think Ishana helped her steal the computery shit," he adds. "She almost said as much at dinner."

Dominatrix taps her fingers on the wheel pensively. "Should we be worried?"

"After all that stuff she said this morning about our slightly-less-than-legal activities? Probably. How did you find us tonight?"

"I put tracking devices in everyone's curry bowls yesterday."

"Okay, I'll admit that's brilliant, but what if we'd pooped them out first?"

"Food doesn't move through you that fast, doll," Dominatrix says, and laughs. She's still coming down off the high of the encounter, and the chuckle is halfway between her villain laugh and her civilian one. Minion is so heart-twistingly glad that he still gets to make her laugh with his stupid jokes. After all the death and destruction tonight, he can't help it if he's feeling a little sappy.

"Thank you," he says. "If you hadn't shown up, I'd probably be dead right now."

"I know." She gives him another, sly smile. "We've always made a good team." Reaching into her bra, she wriggles his phone out from the depths of her impressive cleavage and hands it over. "You did get the photos, didn't you? That wasn't a bluff?"

"Sure did," Minion says proudly, accepting the phone from her. "And I think we should-- Wait." He squints out the windshield. "Is that smoke?"

They turn onto their leafy street to see an enormous column of inky black smoke rising into the sky ahead.

Dominatrix presses her lips together in a thin line.

They cruise slowly past gated driveways and enormous, drooping trees until they can see the flashing lights of the police cars. Dominatrix pulls to the curb and slams on the brakes.

At the top of their own long driveway, where their decadent mansion used to be, is an enormous crater. Great clouds of malignant black smoke waft up from the gaping hole. All around, neighbors peer out from behind curtains at the half-dozen police cars parked willy-nilly along the remains of the cobblestone driveway. Yellow crime-scene tape is strung across the gate, and police officers buzz around, lit eerily by the strobing blue-and-red lights. A single fire truck pumps water into the hole as though trying to fill a hideous swimming pool.

"No," Minion whispers in horror. "I just spent all day fixing that window!"

"They don't send that many cops to a gas leak," Dominatrix says quietly. "Do they have-- Yes, look there. A transcendent investigation team."

The team consists of a very tall, very thin person who has abnormally long, curved-forward arms like a praying mantis, and a spherical person who glows like a nightlight. They both wear sunglasses, even though it's the middle of the night, and as Minion and Dominatrix watch, the team clambers down into the pit that swallowed up the home. They don't send a team like that to just any crime scene. Which means someone reported them.

"You think Val...?"

"He would never risk Wynter like that," she says with certainty.

"But who else knows about us?"

His phone trills. The screen lights up to show an incoming call from Ishana. Minion and Dominatrix look at each other.

He puts her on speaker.

"Shan!" Dominatrix says. "Are you alright?"

Ishana lets out a huge sob. "I can't believe you!" she wails. "I found your lair. I knew you were in some shady stuff but I never imagined you were actually villains! You lied straight to my face, Mom!"

"Sweetheart," Minion says slowly. "What happened to our house?"

"How could you live like that, surrounded by the fruits of your crimes? You probably k-killed people for that stuff! I had to stop it, and you had a whole cupboard full of... of blowy-up shit. Right beside Wynter's dog, who you kidnapped!"

"You betrayed us," Dominatrix says, a steely glint in her eyes.

"You betrayed me first! And Dad, what the heck did you do to Eddie? I brought him home, and he somehow broke into the basement and destroyed Wynter's whole project and I don't know how I'm going to explain it to her--" She breaks down into tears.

"Calm down, Ishana," Dominatrix says. "Why don't we meet somewhere, a neutral location. We can talk this through before you do anything else drastic. You can come home-- Well, we don't have a home anymore, thanks to you, but we can find a way--"

"No! You've been lying to me for years, and I can't trust you anymore. I never want to see you again. Wynter is right. All the villains need to be taken down. I'm going to help her. And that means you're my enemies now." She hangs up before they can respond to her melodramatic declaration.

Minion can't help it. He should be angry. Instead, his chest swells with fatherly pride.

Without a word, Dominatrix turns the rusty minivan around.

"She's standing up for what she believes in, babe," Minion says. "I wish she'd picked another way to do it, because I'm really not thrilled to be homeless right now, but you gotta give her credit."

A slow smile spreads across Dominatrix's face. "If she were here right now I'd wring her neck, but... I'm proud of her, too."

"Whatever her motives, betraying your parents is high-level villainy," Minion says contentedly.

"We raised her right. She'll be okay."

"We will, too. We started from nothing, and we can do it again. Living in the van for a few weeks will be easy compared to that year I spent couch-surfing at Arrogant Anteater's. Did you ever see his apartment? It was a nightmare. I mean absolutely crawling with things with too many legs. He didn't want to clean it up because he loved the free snacks."

She reaches over and squeezes his knee. "What was Shan saying about the dog and White Squall's project?"

"Oh!" Gleefully, Minion snatches his phone up and thumbs through to the camera feed. It takes him several minutes to skip through the footage to the relevant shots, then scrolls back a little further. The timestamp is almost an hour before. He turns the phone around.

Dominatrix glances at it and frowns. "What am I looking at?"

"I attached a tiny camera to Eddie's collar. I had to look up videos on how to get it to connect to my phone," he adds, preening a little. "I had a feeling Ishana would try to return the dog when she found out. And he is very obedient."

"Is he puking on those computery things?"

"He's got acid spit. I trained him to destroy all electronics he comes across. Well, trained maybe isn't the right word. I pointed him at a communicator once, and then he was obsessed. I don't blame him. If I could do that, I would have so much fun wrecking people's most valuable devices."

They watch from the odd view of under his collar as Eddie obediently does his dragon-dog schtick. He snuffles around the base of the machines, then rears up onto his hind legs and blasts drool all over the electronics in White Squall's lair. Enthralled, Dominatrix has to tear her eyes away to make sure they don't crash. Within minutes, there's nothing left of White Squall's computer equipment but a lake of silvery saliva on the floor of the dim room.

"That's her whole server system, melted. Henchr is gone. Actually, let me check." He clicks on the app icon with the black mas, a big, angry error message pops up. Beaming, he shows her the screen. "Flawlessly executed. I'm so good."

"Can't she just move it all to new servers?"

Minion frowns, deflating. "Is that really how it works?"

"Don't be discouraged." Dominatrix pats his knee. "You did amazing. Henchr was a threat to all of villainkind. If she moves her operation, we'll find her and put a stop to it again. And now that we know about the security risks, we can warn people not to use it."

Minion scoffs and tucks his phone away. "Do you think they'll listen? Henchr means cheap staff you don't have to care about. A lot of villains will still think that's worth the risk. Or they'll think we're trying to con them."

"Good point." She runs her nails up his thigh, throwing him a wicked smile. "I like this impulsive new Minion. I'd love it if you'd be my partner in crime again, doll."

"I'd love that, too," he agrees, feeling a little shivery at that look in her eyes and the thought of more jobs like the one tonight, near-death experience and all. When he dies for good, he wants it to be at her side. Going down in a blaze of glory with the love of his life has always been a dream of his.

"How long do you think it'll be until we see Shan's alter ego in the news?" Dominatrix muses.

"I can't wait," Minion says, letting out a tired sigh and settling back into his seat. "Then I can talk about that at the henchparent meetups instead of college. Ugh." He shudders. "It's so much less embarrassing than her being an accountant."

"You know what's embarrassing? Our costumes. This old thing feels like it belongs to my old life, and yours is, well. It's a costume. We should get something matching."

"I like that suit on you!"

"I'll get one that makes my boobs look just as great, I promise. And you can get something equally sexy."

"Deal."

She turns the rattly, vomit-streaked minivan onto the freeway, leaving behind the quiet, leafy neighborhood and with it the wealthy, settled life they lived for a decade. The Baby on Board sticker in the back window flaps in the wind before tearing free to go fluttering into the dark of the night.

Minion reaches out, and Dominatrix laces her fingers through his.

"Do you think Venerable Verb would accept it if we sent him money to help take care of Ishana until she can take care of herself? They live in squalor. Shan deserves better."

"If we can steal money, I think we can figure out how to give someone money whether they want it or not. We're villains, doll. We can do whatever we want."

They both laugh wickedly.

Minion is sore all over, covered in cuts and bruises. His muscles feel weaker than a kitten's, and it hurts to breathe after all the puking and the dust-breathing and the screaming. Even Dominatrix has scrapes, and there's a nasty bruise darkening on her left cheek. They have nothing, not a dollar in their pockets, nowhere to go, and their daughter has disowned them. They have nothing but their talents and the glimmers of new evil plans, and somehow, Minion doesn't mind.

Somehow, it feels like he's really living for the first time in years.